Neil Young wants to quit Spotify over Joe Rogan's vaccine misinformation

Norms are powerful things too.

See, on this matter of vaccination and Covid, the fact is the public trust was abused. The reasons do not matter, only the fact that information was managed away from or in such a way as to not put fact front and center does. We ended up with mixed messages, and a lot of concern that was made more difficult to discern from profiteering, essentially.

That set some norms into play that will be hard to shake now.

Had we leaders who understood that dynamic better, or who were willing to make modeling that understanding a clear priority, assuming they possessed it, the norms would trend toward the science and smarter policy with far more resonance and consensus on all that competing with a more obviously irrational and fractious crowd.

But we didn't, and that is just fact we have to live with.

Censoring people, cancelling them, etc. is not going to help, and it will do more harm.

The harm will come by opportunistic players taking advantage of a more permissive to those sorts of things body politic, who will use it to advantage for profit or to weaken political and ideological foes.

None of that shit helps us. Nor does it improve on the body of people not acting rationally, nor even our ability to reach them!

Our ability to actually have conversations has become far less effective, and the burden on that does not lie with confused ordinary people who may not even realize they are acting irrationally and or irresponsibly.

No, it is square on big media, our leaders failure to serve the public in ways that build that public trust and model how as Americans we can disagree without having to draw hard lines and or pick sides.

Further, enlisting big tech to do this work, as if?

That does make it legal, but no more the good idea than the already poor leadership already is.

It started with Alex Jones. Many of us talked about where we are now and what it means. I know I have.

Looks to me like we are extremely likely to trend more authoritarian and fascist because we prioritize compliance above everything else.

Sure hope it plays out better than that.